


Acknowledging None Else

by kianspo



Series: By Faint Indirections [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kianspo/pseuds/kianspo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epilogue to By Faint Indirections. This is how the story ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acknowledging None Else

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have any defense. Not every story has to be told till the end, but this one asked for it. I had to tell it. And I don't warn for anything, because if you're reading this, chances are you've known full well where this was headed.
> 
> The ever-lovely [secret_chord25](http://archiveofourown.org/users/secret_chord25) deserves all credit for the beta. ♥

\--

Charles dies in the early spring of 2007, four months before Erik’s best book hits the market and five years before gay marriage becomes legal in the State of New York, where he was born. He and Erik had moved back there some twelve years ago, when Charles had been offered tenure at Columbia.

There’s nothing extraordinary or dramatic about the day. It’s late afternoon, and Erik has just come back from meeting his publisher. He shrugs off his coat, takes off his hat, humming a tune under his breath and smirking, already planning how he’s going to make fun of Emma’s successor for Charles’s benefit later that night. He puts the kettle on, turns to answer the phone.

There’s nothing original in the way they tell him, though later, he’ll think about it without a clear idea of what he’d have preferred. The truth is, he never expected to take that call. 

_“Mr. Erik Lehnsherr?”_

_“Yes?”_

_“You are listed as Charles Xavier’s primary emergency contact. We’re sorry to inform you—”_

He’d always thought that, of the two of them, it would be Charles who’d have to have that conversation one day. It should have been Charles.

They had been together twenty-seven years, during which Erik had learned to expect almost anything but _that_. For the longest time, he thought Charles would leave him – for someone younger, someone less jaded. Someone who could give him a child.

Charles only did leave once, shortly after Lorna’s second visit and about the same time Emma had quit. Charles had snapped at last, driven out by Erik’s paranoia and suspicion and, finally, an ultimatum. 

They’d lasted apart for a few agonizing months before succumbing to the inevitable. A baby boy named David had come out of that stormy year, and it had hurt as fuck at first, but later, Erik would think that he’d go through the pain of separation all over again for the same result.

David had stayed with his mother, but she’d brought him around a lot. He had his mother’s blond hair, but he smiled like Charles, and his eyes were the same incandescent blue. Charles lit up every time he saw him, but it was Erik who spoiled the boy rotten.

“I’m almost jealous,” Charles had joked once, watching the two of them play ball. Erik had grinned at him.

Later, when they were alone, curled up in bed, sweaty and still gasping for breath, Erik ran his fingers along the curve of Charles’s back, following the breadcrumb path of freckles he could paint back from memory if they were ever erased from the pale canvas of Charles’s skin.

“Sometimes,” Erik had murmured, “I wish his life for you.”

Charles had turned around, echoes of pleasure making him heavy, loose-limbed. He’d kissed Erik that shaky, greedy way he had sometimes, as though still marveling that he was permitted.

“I don’t,” he’d whispered, pressed it into Erik’s lips, finality and conviction and every doubt they’d ever had, melted.

Erik was never, for a second, worried. He might have remained a heavy smoker, but Charles was a paragon of health. The only thing he overindulged in anymore was reading.

For the first ten years they’d been together, Erik had gotten into a habit of flinching every time the phone rang, half expecting to hear that someone had finally had enough of Charles’s ‘progressive thinking.’ But Charles’s days of rampant activism had long been over as well. He’d lit the torch and moved on to bigger and better things, and even Erik had finally stopped being afraid that Charles would get shot sooner or later.

The only trouble Charles stirred anymore was the excessive amount of imagination and thought he kept on provoking in impressionable young minds.

Even Raven was no longer worried.

No one had expected it when it happened.

\--

It’s a Tuesday, again. They are both up, because Charles has to go to work, and Erik can never get more than four or five hours of sleep anymore.

Erik watches, amused, as Charles stares at his receding hairline in the mirror, the corners of his mouth turned downward in a pout.

“Don’t laugh,” Charles sighs, poking Erik in the ribs with his elbow, his own lips curling. “It’s not my fault you stole all the good genes from the pool. Dinner at Raven’s tonight, remember?”

He pecks Erik on the lips lightly, and Erik ruffles his thinning hair before pushing him out the door.

Charles doesn’t make it to Raven’s. He doesn’t even make it to his office. He smiles at the taxi driver, cursing ‘the bloody rain’ and catching the hem of his coat with the door.

By the time the cab pulls up at campus, Charles has stopped breathing.

\--

Erik wonders sometimes if another way would have been better. If Charles had passed in his sleep perhaps, with Erik beside him. Or if it happened when Erik wasn’t there at all.

For the longest time, it doesn’t make any sense. For the longest time, even going through the motions, Erik can’t comprehend the reality of it. It doesn’t compute. There’s no explanation for it.

Charles was too young. It shouldn’t have happened like this; it wasn’t his time. Erik should have been the first one to go.

But Erik is still here. No traces of cancer in his lungs, no hints of heart failure. His memory isn’t fading, not even a little bit, and Charles’s face is as clear before him every time he closes his eyes as it was the day they met.

For the rest of his life, Erik doesn’t forget a single detail. He isn’t making an effort; it’s just there, sewn into his skin, warm and sweet and no longer foreign under it. Charles’s laugh; his voice; his scent.

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Charles is gone at all. It always feels as though he’s only just been there, as if the air is still disturbed from where he’s moved through not a second ago, heading out of the room to make tea. Erik keeps on waiting for Charles to reappear, getting impatient when he doesn’t or idly beginning to wonder where he’s gotten to, the same way he forgets that his knees can’t take an especially long flight of stairs or that he needs glasses. 

Then, of course, he remembers, and feels foolish. But the feeling that Charles had only just been here and the knowledge that he’d been gone a long time are hard to reconcile. Erik knows better, but he can’t help slipping into the feeling.

Despite the sweltering success of his last book, an avalanche of pleas from his fans, and the less--than-subtle prodding from his editor, Erik never writes again. The last book he’d shown to Charles becomes his last of all.

He visits Charles’s grave sometimes, but he doesn’t like it – as irony would have it, the cemetery is the only place where he doesn’t feel Charles with him. The stone has Charles’s name on it, and Erik forces himself to stare at it, trying to stop feeling like an intruder or a tourist. He feels as though he’s gawking at the grave of some stranger. The place has no connection to Charles, and Erik doesn’t like going there. In the end, he stops altogether, leaving it to Raven instead.

He goes back to San Francisco once, half-expecting to find a ghost town, but it’s not like that at all. Everything’s too bright and too fast, and there’s nothing he recognizes anymore. It’s different, almost alien. Even the ocean has changed, and nothing is the same. It doesn’t feel as though Charles has left any imprint, and Erik can’t fathom it. It stings like the worst kind of betrayal.

It’s not home anymore, but neither is New York. Erik knows why, of course. He’s only ever truly found home once, and it wasn’t about the place.

Sometimes he wonders, not with bitterness but rather some distant curiosity, why he is the one to have pulled the longer match. He’s outlived almost everyone he’s ever known, and he can’t divine a reason. He isn’t doing anything worthy with the extra time. He certainly isn’t more deserving.

He comes to the family gatherings, which for years has seemed to consist of people unbound by blood. He looks at Raven – still stunning, still every inch a head-turner. He looks at David.

Time has worked its magic on the boy’s angelic eyes and cherub gold curls, and now he’s the spitting image of his father, down to the modest height and the way his lips flatten into a thin line when he’s angry.

But his laugh, the sweet, familiar sound tingling down Erik’s spine, is too carefree and too light. His eyes don’t challenge demons. There is no shade of dark on his palette, as though he’s lacking a dimension.

And it’s a good thing, but it’s at moments like this when Erik misses Charles the most – not a friend and lover, but a kindred spirit, a brother in arms, someone who _knows_ , someone who stared into the face of the abyss until the last inch of his soul had been studied by it.

Raven has never been one to wallow, but the last time Erik sees her, she says, “I got a very good offer for our old house.”

Erik lights a cigarette, unapologetic under her narrowed gaze. “You should sell it. You could use the money.”

She nods. “I know. But.”

Erik shrugs. A sentimental Raven is perhaps the hardest adjustment he’ll ever make.

In the end, he doesn’t have to.

\--

It’s been eight years since the phone call, and one night, Erik closes his eyes to never open them again.

He goes to bed, still feeling in his blood that he’s not alone, a soft voice whispering in his ear that Charles will join him in just a few minutes, once he’s done with his book in the other room. On the verge of giving up consciousness, Erik feels the bed dip and moves instinctively to make room.

He falls asleep smiling.

\--

Erik is dreaming.

He steps out of the house into the blistering California sun, drawn out by the sound of some commotion. On the lawn next to his, Raven is chasing Charles with a garden hose. Charles is laughing, trying to avoid her, arms raised, useless, against the cold spray that hits him square in the chest. He’s laughing so hard that he can barely run, oblivious, happy, _twenty-four_ – again, always.

He spots Erik, and his whole face lights up. Charles runs straight toward him, jumping into his arms, his weight knocking them both down. Erik hits his elbow, but he’s laughing, too as they roll across the lawn, the grass wet, sun in his eyes, blinding. He can just make out Charles’s face as Charles kisses him, too excited to get it right, drunk on laughter, too vibrant, _perfect_ , dripping water all over Erik’s shirt.

“Missed you,” searing hot in the tight space between them. “What took you so long?”

Erik closes his eyes for just a split second—

And a whole new life begins.

 

\--

**THE END**


End file.
